100 Million Chinese Projected to Travel Overseas in 2021: How Realistic Is That?

After a sensational National Day Golden Week holiday last October, hopes are mounting that 2021 will see Chinese leisure travelers going overseas as soon as  February, making up for the interrupted Lunar New Year holiday they endured this year. China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, better known as COTRI, even goes as far as forecasting 100 million international trips by mainland Chinese in 2021, sealing China “as the number one international tourism source market again” and well elbowing out the number two, USA, which “will see much lower outbound numbers especially in the first half of 2021,” said COTRI CEO Wolfgang Georg Arlt. China is the “tallest within a group of dwarfs" in recovery, and the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel “looks very much like a Chinese lantern,” he said. The forecast is based on compelling evidence of huge pent-up demand, but the more wobbly grounds that the virus is almost defeated in East Asia and vaccines will “hopefully” become available in a few weeks. At press time, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong are all experiencing a resurgence in cases, forcing a postponement of the much-heralded Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble. Positive vaccine developments in China and elsewhere have provided much cheer, but are widely expected to take some time to be successful. 100 Million, 100 Million! With Covid-19 virtually wiping out 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals last year,  the prospect of 100 million Chinese travelers arriving somewhere overseas in 2021 looks huge and tantalizing. But as in past years, many will be arriving in the neighborhood. In 2019, of 169 million Chinese outbound travelers, 100 million were to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, 69 million to the rest of the world, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics of China. It's no different from the U.S.. In 2019, of 100 million U.S. citizens traveling overseas, 55 million were to Mexico and Cana